


Uneasy Lies the Head

by macavitykitsune



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Series, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-10 22:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2042793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macavitykitsune/pseuds/macavitykitsune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Swords fall. Kings rise. This is the fundamental truth of the world, and this is, perhaps, why the Sword haunts him as much as Suoh's memory does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uneasy Lies the Head

Swords fall. Kings rise. 

The rhythm is decades old. Fruitful successions may come from failed survival. He has always known this, always accepted it. The Blue title may weigh down his shoulders, but not usurper’s guilt. The promise of destruction hovers above him every time Reishi calls his power, once bright and gleaming with false hope, now tarnished, held together with simplified reality. That is reminder and threat and tribute enough. 

In that light, it seems perfectly logical that the crumbling ruin of Suoh’s Sword dropping from the sky haunts him even more than the thrust of his blade that shattered it before it hit the ground. The kerchief with which he wiped the blood off his hands still sits in a drawer of his desk at work, blood red on pristine white, so perfectly symbolic of that moment that he could laugh. Sometimes he does, and Awashima looks at him strangely afterwards, by which he supposes that he sounds rather odd. The weight of Suoh’s body collapsing against his suffocates him in his sleep, infinite unfolding layers of the memory of a single moment, until he can paint over the blur of trauma with a thousand sharp scents and two perfect colours, haunted by the noiseless threat of the descending Sword. Evenings are a litany of the excuses that have become his uniform, and the days are razor-edged chess games arranged around the concealment of the slow decay of the symbol of his own power. In his dreams, Suoh falls to Reishi’s sword and Suoh’s Sword falls to Reishi’s end, death-white eating at blood-red until everything is nothing at all. 

It is a lie that only Kings can kill Kings. If the Red Vanguard decided to take his bat to Reishi’s head in revenge tomorrow, he would spill blood and memories and life onto the ground - it would take longer, and probably hurt less, but that’s hardly relevant. The truth of the matter is simply that only Kings _may_ kill Kings; they are the balances to each other, and the enforcers of that balance. But to exercise that power is also to accept the price of the failure inherent to it. Suoh Mikoto died at the hands of his own grief and Reishi’s failure, and the least he can do is know it. His own power squirms uneasily in his hands, now, tendrils of it drifting and stumbling in subtle ways that he passes off to others as arrogant showmanship or clumsiness, whichever will persuade his unwanted audiences. He knows it will pass as his mind and spirit heal. 

Or perhaps this is his new reality: a fixed presence accessed by the droop of an eyelid or the slackening of breath, by chance moments of rest or respite, and over it all, the terrifying, unknowable silence with which Suoh’s power turned on itself, as Reishi’s power turns on itself, weaponised guilt and grief cannibalised to devour sleep and dark and life.

The Red Sword falls. The Blue King rises.


End file.
